Men top Central, SBU

By Matt Gleaves

March 4, 2010 No Comments

Missouri Western sent their seniors out with a win and three game winning streaks that was capped off with an 86-72 win against Southwest Baptist Saturday night.
SBU won the opening tip and quickly turned it into three points after a Western foul on a lay-up that dropped and a free throw that followed.

The lead wouldn’t last long, though. The crowd got behind the Griffons and helped them to take the lead at 9-6 early in the first half.

“The crowd’s energy was everything tonight,” senior Marcus Jones said. “If we had been on the road I don’t know that the outcome would have been the same.”

The Griffons battled through a back and forth first half to take a six-point lead into halftime as well as most of the momentum of the game.

Southwest Baptist came out in the second half and quickly started to chip away at the Griffons lead and with just over three minutes into the second half, the lead had evaporated to just a single point.

Western quickly grabbed the momentum back when Brandon Beck stole a pass at half court and outran his defender down the court to throw down a dunk that brought the crowd to their feet. From that point forward, the Griffons wouldn’t give up the lead the rest of the game.

SBU played the statistics late in the first half as they started fouling the Griffon ball handlers in the backcourt with four minutes remaining in the game. Coming into the game the Griffons were only shooting 59 percent from the foul line as a team and were forced to try and win the game from the charity stripe.

Western would go on to hit 20 of 27 free throw attempts in the game and ice the game late in the second half.

“For a team shooting 59 percent from the free throw line, I was very happy with how well we closed out the game from the line,” head coach Tom Smith said.

Western will turn around and play the Bearcats again in the first round of the MIAA tournament and will look to do many things the same to get a first round win against SBU.

“We knew this was going to be a big game for seeding in the tournament and we want to wear the white jerseys against them when we play them again,” Martin Nolan said.

Western will be the fourth seed and Southwest Baptist will be the fifth seed when they meet in the first round of the tournament.

Western finishes the regular season 17-10 overall and 12-8 in the MIAA. They will play in a rematch with Southwest Baptist in the first round of the MIAA tournament March 5 at 2:15 p.m.